


That Which We Call a Naruto

by Ferrero13



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Identity Reveal, M/M, Mistaken Identity, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2018-12-04 14:25:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11557071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferrero13/pseuds/Ferrero13
Summary: The road to becoming a respectable Hokage is a long and tedious one. As it turns out, it's also incredibly confusing — there is no shortage of people who can't keep track of who he is.Or, 10 people who didn't recognise who Naruto was, and one person who did.Chapter 11: Home | In which the worst part of being sealed away in a jinchuuriki isn’t the being sealed part—it’s the jinchuuriki part. Or: Kurama wishes he didn’t have to feel and hear everything that happens when his host melts every time a certain someone comes within chakra-sensing range.





	1. Hokage

**Author's Note:**

> Ignores the ending and Boruto. Chapter lengths range from 500 to 2k words, and some may be more light-hearted than others. Chapters are also in chronological order. Any inconsistencies with canon can be blamed on the fact that I haven't actually read Nauto in years and I get all my info from the wiki. I switch between equivalent terms (e.g. "the Seventh" and "Nanadaime"; "shinobi" and "ninja") to distinguish between character POVs across chapters, but otherwise the same term(s) will be used consistently within individual chapters.
> 
> Also, I use Naruto's fondness for orange as a kind of running gag. I apologise in advance if it gets too repetitive. :/
> 
> Title inspired by the saying "that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet"--basically, Naruto is still Naruto no matter what people call him.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a little girl learns that not all competent, young-looking blonds are village leaders.

Ranks in wartime had always been a finicky thing. People were promoted all the time but nobody had the patience to keep track of people who weren’t immediately pertinent to them. Civilians, especially, responded to any authority figure and mentally assigned them ranks based on the number of people they seemed to be able to command.

Himeko was new to all of this, having been uprooted from her home when her village was destroyed after a particularly flashy ninja battle. They were on their way to Konoha to stay with a distant relative in relative peace, but due to a massive stroke of bad luck were caught in yet another ninja battle.

This one was over far more quickly than she expected, given the way it started.

To be honest, Himeko was starting to resent the idea of living in a ninja village if she had to put up with hostage situations when she wasn’t even in Konoha yet. Being taken hostage was not fun, which Himeko had learned back when her village was being destroyed by mad men with strange jutsu, but it did give her an impressive view of any ongoing battles and how stupid ninja can be, as evidenced by the time one of them thought that it was a great idea to use a fire jutsu in her village where all of the houses were made of wood. And that particular ninja was supposed to be _helping_ her village.

That was not to say that the current battle was a particularly impressive one either. At least, it wasn’t, until reinforcements came in the form of a single man—at which point it was less battle and more one-sided massacre, sans actual death.

The arrival of one man should not have been able to turn the tides so drastically, but the man had some fancy jutsu up his sleeve that allowed him to multiply like rabbits in heat.

“Naruto!” one of the Konoha ninja who had been fighting a rogue-nin wielding an unreasonably bulky sword cried in relief when nearly fifty identical-looking blonds appeared out of nowhere, and his team followed with similarly relieved exclamations.

“Miyagi-san! You and your team owe me five bowls of ramen for this!” one of the blonds shouted back cheerfully, and all but two of them jumped into the fray.

Before she knew it, the ninja holding her family hostage had been disposed of by the two blonds left, and one of the blonds bent down to ruffle her hair before joining the rest of the identical-looking blonds that looked like their entire strategy boiled down to ‘bury the enemy alive by sheer number.’ The other blond stayed with them and offered her a candy.

“My name is Naruto,” the blond said, and ruffled her hair again. “What’s yours?”

At this point Himeko would like to point out that, having relatives who were ninja, she could spot powerful ninja from a mile away and behind three waterfalls. This one, Naruto-sama, who could make more clones than there were members of her entire extended family, was undoubtedly the most powerful one she’d seen so far. And from the way the team of Konoha ninja that had been trying to save them were responding to the man’s occasional commands, she knew that Naruto-sama was very high up indeed.

When the rogue-nin were all tied up in complicated knots, Naruto-sama dispelled his clones and clapped a hand on the back of one of the other Konoha ninja, chatting good-naturedly as they made their way back to Himeko and her family.

Eager to express her gratitude to her saviour, Himeko stood up on slightly wobbly legs and said around the candy in her mouth, “Thank you, Hokage-sama!”

Now to be fair, Himeko didn’t even belong to Konoha, so she thought that she could probably be forgiven for not knowing anything about the Hokage beyond ‘very competent, very blond, and very young-looking.’ Had she known how common competent, young-looking blonds were in Konoha, she might have been a little more hesitant, but as it was all available information pointed to this man being a Very Important Konoha Ninja, and everybody knew that the most important Konoha ninja was the Hokage.

All of the Konoha ninja paused for a second, then stared at the blond man, then started punching his shoulder while laughing loudly as Naruto-sama went through three different shades of red and finally settled on the colour of ripe tomatoes. He scratched the back of his head with one hand while swatting the other ninja with the other.

“That’s very nice of you to say,” Naruto-sama told her, “but I’m not the Hokage.”

“Not _yet_ ,” another ninja said, grinning and elbowing the blond.

Somewhere between admiration and embarrassment, Himeko allowed herself to imagine life in Konoha with Naruto-sama as her Hokage, and it didn’t sound too bad at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't really decided on one or two of the 10 mistaken identities yet, so if you have any ideas of what you'd like to see, let me know. :)


	2. Yellow Flash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Yondaime Hokage's legacy lives on in his son, save for minor changes to colour scheme.

Kaizen had been around for a very long time. He had known Hiruzen when they were both capable of little more than suckling milk, and had fought alongside Hiruzen through many, many battles over many, many decades. And although Hiruzen used to say that Kaizen had the self-preservation instinct of a suicidal Kiri rogue-nin with two bloodline limits and no training, it was Kaizen who lived long enough to watch Minato’s son grow from a horrifyingly orange ball of energy with dreams of becoming Hokage into a (still horrifyingly orange) shinobi in his own right who had a real chance of actually becoming Hokage.

Of course, he wasn’t arrogant enough to think that he survived where Hiruzen didn’t because he was a better shinobi. If anything, the fact that Hiruzen had held the title of Hokage for so many decades was a minor miracle in its own right, given the literal bright red target that it painted on him. Honestly, that hat was a serious eyesore.

So, really, it was entirely Hiruzen’s fault that part of Kaizen didn’t think it too out of the ordinary for any Hokage—past or present—to have achieved some form of immortality.

At present, Kaizen was seated in a tree, brush in his mouth and marking strategies on a scroll. Somewhere west of him, Konoha forces had joined hands with Suna to great effect. Just as the noises were starting to die down and Kaizen felt the familiar chakra signatures of his fellow Konoha shinobi flickering worryingly in and out of existence, he felt a new signature—large and bold and somehow giving the impression of being very orange—entering the playing field with a minor crackle of ozone.

A short while after, right on cue, he heard loud screams of terror from the enemies.

“Yellow Flash!”

If Kaizen, for a brief moment, felt like he was nearly twenty years younger and Minato was still around to be called on to reliably win any battle he was sent to fight…well, Hiruzen wasn’t here to tell him he was getting senile in his old age.

“What the hell is intelligence being paid for? Why weren’t we told that Konoha revived their Yellow Flash?!” came the voice of a thoroughly traumatised enemy shinobi scrambling away from the battle towards the ground below Kaizen’s perch.

Slipping from his branch, Kaizen landed in front of the two escaping shinobi. His knees groaned and his neck cricked, but Kaizen would be damned before he let these two get away. He would fight till the end for the village that Hiruzen gave his life for.

“That would be because we didn’t,” he told them in a rasping voice, then pulled hard on the ninja wire he had rigged this area with.

Naruto may not be the Yellow Flash (and, quite honestly, he couldn’t even if he wanted to, because that boy was much more orange than yellow), but he didn’t need to be. He was more than capable of creating his own legacy, and he was just as reliable as his father had been, even if, yes, his love for orange was a little horrifying. He would just have to get used to red if he wanted that stupid hat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Naruto may or may not know the Hiraishin, but he's fast, and he's blond, and anybody who didn't know better probably can't be blamed for thinking he's the Yellow Flash (or as I like to think of it, Speedy Blond). This was a short chapter, but the next one will be much longer. About 1.7k words.


	3. Eternal Genin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the much aggrieved son of a seed seller discovers that rank is basically meaningless.

Satoshi’s old man had already been nearly blind and completely deaf in one ear when Satoshi graduated from the Academy at the age of twelve. Because the geezer just wouldn’t settle in the village and insisted on travelling to different countries on his never-ending hunt for quality seeds, Satoshi had to effectively retire just before his Chuunin Exam to follow along and ensure that his useless father didn’t get himself killed on one of his round trips to Wind Country or Water Country or wherever the hell he thought had the best seeds that season.

He had been fourteen. _Fourteen_. His career had lasted all of two years, and he hadn’t even made it to chuunin! At least he got to keep his hitai-ate and was still allowed to wear it. If not for those two allowances, he’d have forced his father to stay put the moment it became apparent that the old fool couldn’t tell a giant sequoia from a coast redwood. It was at times like these that Satoshi wished his mother was still alive to knock some sense into his father’s no doubt inch-thick skull.

They were about a week away from Konoha—from civilisation and running water and an honest to god _bed_ —when a Konoha ninja wandered into their camp and asked Satoshi if he’d encountered any bandits recently.

“Not really,” Satoshi shrugged. “But it’s not like we have anything of worth anyway.”

“Brat, these ‘worthless’ things put you through school. Be grateful!” his father shouted from where he was seated on their caravan, slowly tallying sales.

“What was the point anyway? I have no prospects because I’m stuck with you until you stop being so stupidly stubborn and just stay in the village already!” Satoshi yelled back.

“Why you ungrateful little…oh! If it isn’t Orange!” his father suddenly said, voice switching to sugary sweet so quickly that Satoshi felt a bit like he’d been slapped. He didn’t even know that the old man was capable of being anything that didn’t include snapping at other people.

“Huh? Green Gramps?” the newcomer—apparently called Orange (what kind of stupid names were ‘Orange’ and ‘Green Gramps’ anyway?)—said as Satoshi’s father ambled up to them. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Kumo?”

“Bad seeds this year,” Satoshi’s father grumbled. “No point staying any longer if nobody would buy or sell, especially since this one—” he jabbed a finger at Satoshi accusingly but Satoshi couldn’t bring himself to feel any remorse, “—does nothing but glare at all of my customers into running away.” Maybe if Satoshi continued to do that, his father would decide that staying in Konoha and building a solid customer base would be more lucrative than pandering to fate and chance and snotty foreigners. It was worth a shot.

“Huh. I have a bit of spare cash and an extra mouth to feed. Want to do business with me again for old time’s sake?” Orange offered. Now that Satoshi was really looking at the man, he realised that it was actually a really fitting name. There was nothing on him that didn’t have at least a bit of orange in it. Even his hitai-ate had some orange stitching at the ends of its unnecessarily long cloth.

“Bah. Old time’s sake? I sent you a whole packet of tomato seeds just six months ago when you wrote to me crying about your boy experiencing tomato withdrawal because of bad harvest. How did he like those?” Ah. Satoshi remembered that letter. He’d had to read it for his father because the geezer’s eyes barely qualified as eyes anymore. Orange was a lot less histrionic in person than the hysteria evident in every word of the letter had suggested.

“I think you’ve got yourself a loyal customer in him. I’m sick of having tomatoes with every meal but he won’t stop asking for more,” Orange said, looking mildly nauseous. “There were more tomatoes than noodles in my ramen.”

“I’ll take that as a yes to more seeds,” Satoshi’s old man said proudly, while Satoshi marvelled at the fact that Orange already had a child who was capable of eating solid food even though he didn’t look like he could legally drink yet. Satoshi was already in his mid-twenties and he hadn’t even thought about settling down beyond a vague notion that his future would probably include a wife and two children and a father who obediently stayed put in Konoha after finally going fully blind. Finally achieving chuunin status after missing out on so many exams would be a definite bonus.

Orange heaved a heavy sigh. “Unfortunately. I’m basically a glorified slave to his whims at this point.”

“At least you’re allowed outside of the village. I have to fight my brat tooth and nail.”

“This is actually my first mission out of the village in months, if you’ll believe that,” Orange said, rolling his eyes. “It’s like they don’t trust me with anything other than paperwork just because I’m officially still only a genin. So you better not charge me too much since I’m still getting genin pay.”

Huh. Most genin with more than a couple of years of experience under their belts would be regularly trusted with C-ranks that would take them outside Konoha unless things had changed since Satoshi left. Orange mustn’t be very good if he was usually stuck in the village. And to already have a child at his age…Satoshi had to admit that his future didn’t look very bright. Satoshi may no longer be an official ninja of Konoha, but at least he still had time to train. Enough time, even, to get good enough to defeat most of the chuunin he’d been able to goad into spars as he traipsed across the elemental nations with his father. He had to be able to defend his old man and their wares if they were ambushed by bandits or rogue-nin, after all. Orange, on the other hand…children were incredibly time-consuming. Satoshi didn’t envy Orange one bit.

“That’s because they care. My boy would have me tied to a rock in Konoha if he thought that’d keep me from wandering off to other countries. They just want us safe, you know.”

Orange huffed. “Yeah, I guess, but unlike you I’m actually capable of—”

“Don’t move and nobody gets hurt.”

“You said there weren’t any bandits!” Orange glared at Satoshi, looking betrayed.

“There weren’t any _before_. There are now,” Satoshi said, resisting a strong urge to mutter, ‘Why me.’ It would not do to offend a customer from Konoha if Satoshi’s long-term plans to settle in the village hinged on getting his father hooked on the Konoha market. “You stand back and leave this to me.”

“I think I’m supposed to be offended but now I’m really just curious. You think your son can handle this?” Orange asked Satoshi’s father as Satoshi gripped a tanto in each hand and settled into a defensive stance in front of the probably useless genin and Satoshi’s definitely useless father.

“Well, I’m not dead yet, even if the brat has just proven that he’s blinder than me,” said useless father replied, and then Satoshi didn’t hear any more because air was whistling in his ears as he headed straight for the closest target with his tanto poised to slit their neck.

Ten minutes and five bandits later, Satoshi sheathed his tanto and congratulated himself on a job well done. These bandits had some training in ninja arts and they’d been more of a challenge than Satoshi had been expecting, but that didn’t matter because he’d shown them that he was made of sterner stuff than the average traveller. They wouldn’t bother his father anymore. He could have sworn that there were more of them, though. Maybe the rest fled when they saw how outclassed they were.

Whatever. It’s not like Satoshi cared as long as his father was alive to yell another fellow merchant into giving him a much better deal on sunflower seeds than was originally offered.

“Old man, where’s the water? I haven’t been so evenly matched since you pissed off that mercenary in Kusa. This is exactly why I can’t leave you alone…” Satoshi said as he walked back to where he’d left the genin and his father, and then he stopped in his tracks when his eyes finally registered the sight in front of him. “What the hell?”

Dozens—literally _dozens_ —of bodies were scattered all around his father, who was calmly sipping from a teacup while Orange poured tea from a thermos into another cup. Some of the bodies were groaning and others were spitting curses that sounded suspiciously like prayers for Jashin to take them quickly.

“Oh, Satoshi!” his father greeted, waving and smiling to a tree about three arm spans away from where Satoshi actually was. Orange gently turned Satoshi’s father so that he was actually looking in the region of Satoshi’s face, then went back to pouring tea. “Welcome back. You were taking too long, so we thought we’d better take care of the ones here while you were gone.”

“I’m sorry. What? ‘We?’ Did another ninja come by?”

Orange stood up and walked over. He pressed a cup full of hot tea into one of Satoshi’s hands, then gripped the other in a firm handshake.

Looking into Satoshi’s dazed, unseeing eyes, Orange smiled and said, “Uzumaki Naruto. It’s nice to finally meet you, Morishita Satoshi. Thank you for keeping your father alive long enough for him to get these ramen-ruining tomato seeds to me.”

Oh.

Did Satoshi seriously just imply that the hero of the Fourth Shinobi War and Konoha’s next Hokage was a good-for-nothing Eternal Genin who couldn’t take on a bunch of barely trained bandits? Suddenly, travelling around the elemental nations with this father for the rest of his life didn’t sound like such a terrible idea after all. Settling in Konoha was overrated anyway.

Yes, the life of a wandering ninja-for-hire was starting to sound very attractive. He could always join Suna if he really wanted to take the Chuunin Exam. He heard that they had very nice bonsai trees there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being trained to be a Hokage probably involves very few missions (much less out-of-village ones) and a lot of protocol learning, and I'm sure Kakashi is more than willing to foist his paperwork on Naruto for 'training reasons.' Also, no points for guessing the person responsible for the tomatoes in Naruto's ramen.
> 
>  **Next chapter** : ANBU


	4. ANBU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which ANBU Hawk finds out more about the next Hokage's private life than he ever wanted to.

Hawk was not having a good day. A new member had been assigned to his team for today’s mission. While this would ordinarily have been fine, Hawk had not been expecting a newly inducted operative when he’d accepted the responsibility of making sure that their seventh Hokage wasn’t assassinated before his inauguration later that day. Clearly, Kakashi hated him, because the Seventh Hokage was enough of a handful as it was without the additional burden of having to orientate a new member.

God, Hawk could still remember the brat—the _Seventh_ , he had to get used to that soon, so he might as well get a head start—giving him the slip to deface the Hokage monument, and he hadn’t even graduated from the Academy yet. Hawk had begged off guard duty ever since, but Kakashi wouldn’t let him get out of this one. He said he wanted the best people on the job, which Hawk knew was utter bullshit given the newbie’s presence as well as the fact that Kakashi was nothing but a stinking pile of shit all the time anyway.

Sixth Hokage his ass. It was a wonder that Konoha was still standing after Kakashi was done with it. The only reason Hawk hadn’t already torched his sorry ass was because Kakashi was still Hokage, and as much as Hawk wanted to plunge a fire jutsu into his chest he didn’t want to be exiled for treason. Kakashi simply wasn’t worth it. Burning one of those hideously orange books that Kakashi was always carrying around, on the other hand…

‘Fox, reporting for duty,’ the trainee signed, textbook perfect, the tattoo on his arm dark and bold and rimmed with irritated skin. Hawk wondered if this one would last long enough to fade. Many didn’t.

‘Crow, take him,’ Hawk signed to one of the other members of his team, whose mask was a mere formality given that he had very distinctive eyes that no shinobi worth their hitai-ate would fail to recognise. Or, if they did, they generally didn’t last long enough to learn their lesson. Also, there weren’t very many one-handed active duty shinobi, especially not ones that managed to somehow make having only one arm look more like an asset than a liability.

‘Yes, sir,’ Crow signed back, and led Fox off somewhere to the east of the Seventh, who was currently crouched down on the street and speaking with a little girl who seemed about ready to wet herself with awe. Hawk signed for the other members of his team to take their positions and they leapt off without a word.

All day long, the Seventh went around Konoha chatting and shaking hands, villagers eagerly crowding around the street as he passed through on what would be his last meet and greet before he officially traded his hitai-ate in for the Hokage's hat. Unless something went horribly wrong, of course. Seeing as the brat was who he was, Hawk wouldn’t put it past him to find his way into an international conflict and resolve it by noon with his special brand of Therapy Jutsu, leaving behind confused enemy shinobi in desperate need of Konoha’s now incredibly established Rogue Ninja Reformation services, courtesy of the Seventh’s inexplicable propensity for dragging back strays.

From the corner of his eye, Hawk watched Fox and Crow—who was a stray the Seventh dragged back after significant kicking and screaming and far too many chidori—hold a conversation with hand signs. Crow looked marginally frustrated, signs sharp and shoulders tense, but Fox just shrugged it all off and signed back something that appeared to calm Crow down. Satisfied that Fox wasn’t setting Crow off and was thus proving to not be completely incompetent, Hawk turned his attention (though not all of it—he was responsible for the newbie after all, and a massive screw up on the newbie’s part would reflect very badly on him) back to their future Hokage.

The last leg of the Seventh’s trip was coming to an end, and Hawk couldn’t wait for this to be over so that he could murder Kakashi in his sleep without being sentenced to death for high treason against the Hokage. What was the Fifth even thinking when she made Kakashi Hokage?

Actually, she probably wasn’t. There was a good chance that she was too drunk to make any well-informed decisions regarding successors, which was how they ended up with Kakashi as the Sixth Hokage, which was in turn how Hawk ended up stuck with this job. Honestly, how hadn’t the Seventh already razed Konoha to the ground with how the villagers had treated him before, when Hawk could barely stop himself from killing one man?

Well, he supposed there was a reason why Hawk was ANBU and the brat was going to be Hokage, after all. Mental stability and all that was overrated for a shinobi, but the Hokage had to at least present some facsimile of sanity, otherwise civilians would leave in droves. Although, come to think of it, that didn’t sound too bad. It was the civilians who were the most unbearable toward the Seventh when he was still a child, and a village full of shinobi sounded like a dream come true.

Regardless of what Hawk wanted, though, the Seventh seemed to like the village well enough despite what they’d done to him, and Hawk liked the Seventh well enough to continue serving him despite his poor decision to keep the shinobi to civilian ratio the way it was. If it weren’t for the Seventh, who was now ascending the stairs to—hang on a moment. What were Fox and Crow doing?

Three rooftops away, Crow was pulling on the strings keeping Fox’s mask in place, and _Fox wasn’t stopping him_. What the hell?

As Fox’s mask came off, Hawk marvelled that this must be what it was like to have the Sharingan. Everything was moving extremely slowly—so slowly that Hawk could probably be across the street and slamming Fox’s mask back on his face before it even left it completely if Hawk hadn’t also been slowed down with time as well.

To Hawk’s credit, the mask was barely off before he recognised the face under it. To Hawk’s utter dismay, however, it was a face that belonged to someone whom he should be able to recognise even if they had been burned, mutilated, transformed by a henge, or even, yes, _under a_ _goddamn mask_. And now that he was paying attention, the hair was also a dead giveaway. Once this was over, Hawk decided that he would seek psychological help and schedule an appointment with an optometrist to determine if he hadn’t recognised that hair due to past trauma of failing to keep track of a pre-genin despite being a fully-fledged jounin or just plain bad eyesight.

And so, three rooftops away, Hawk watched as the Seventh Hokage grinned at Crow, six unmistakable lines on his cheeks. A smattering of hand signs and a firm hug later, Crow raised the bottom of his own mask and Hawk watched with almost morbid fascination (and a touch of horror) as his future Hokage leaned in. Even with Fox’s mask held up to give them some semblance of privacy, their faces were far too close for Hawk to descend into denial even if he wanted to. After a bit of lingering that Hawk would have been tempted to call sweet if it hadn’t involve Crow, Crow was left holding Fox’s mask while the Seventh seamlessly exchanged places with what Hawk now realised had been a clone all along.

God fucking damn it. Hawk knew Kakashi wouldn’t have just foisted a random trainee on him without being able to get a laugh out of it. For that alone, Hawk would start researching resurrection jutsu so he could kill Kakashi over and over again, each time more painfully and slowly than the last.

The only good thing to have come out of this was the knowledge that the Seventh would be the most viciously well-protected Kage in the Five Shinobi Countries, even if Hawk would rather take a memory-altering jutsu to the head than remember the brief, tender smile on Crow’s face before his mask was pulled back down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why is Naruto hanging out with ANBU instead of shaking hands? Because the Hokage is a far too easy target, that's why. Time of peace or not, paranoia never really leaves you.
> 
> And why isn't Sasuke behind Hawk's mask despite his summons? Blame the fact that there are too many fics where he's Crow so anything else just feels weird to me.
> 
>  **Next chapter** : Hokage's Aide


	5. Hokage's Aide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which news of the Seventh Hokage’s inauguration doesn’t get around fast enough in civilian circles.

The only remarkable thing about Konoha’s entourage, Raimaru decided, was their age. Or rather, their apparent lack of it. Nobody in the group looked above twenty, aside from the notably regal man with silver hair standing in the back whom Raimaru knew to be Konoha’s Sixth Hokage. Really, what was the Hokage doing with a bunch of teenagers anyway? Surely there must have been older, wiser, and more competent individuals in Konoha to choose from, instead of this rag-tag group that couldn’t even coordinate their uniforms. Had they no pride in their village?

One of the two shinobi that flanked the Sixth Hokage—Hatake-sama, better known in some less civilised circles far too used to fighting as ‘Kakashi of the Sharingan’—was disrespectfully wearing her hitai-ate in her _pink_ hair as a _hairband_. It wasn't a forehead protector for no reason. The other one was exposing his _entire midriff_ and his smile made Raimaru's skin crawl.

In front of the Hokage was a masked person whose entire face was hidden, which was downright rude as far as Raimaru was concerned. And the blond beside that person was wearing orange. _Orange_. Under a tan travel cloak trimmed with _red flames_. Paired with an _oversized hat_ hooked behind his back that made him look like a farmer. Clearly not a shinobi, if that impractical garment was anything to go by.

Well, it wasn’t Raimaru’s business what the Konoha delegation wore so long as he showed the Hokage to his seat at the trade summit without making a fool of himself. Although he’d heard that Konoha would be welcoming its new Hokage any time soon, it clearly hadn’t happened in time for the negotiations if, instead of his successor, the Sixth Hokage had put in an appearance.

“Rokudaime Hokage-sama, we are pleased to host you and your delegation today,” Raimaru said, bowing deeply to the Hokage, hands folded neatly inside his pale blue sleeves. He kept his eyes on his feet the way he was trained to do until the Hokage spoke and allowed him to rise again.

Frustratingly, the Hokage left Raimaru bowing for an incredibly long time, as if testing him or waiting for him to say something else.

“Uh, you don’t have to keep doing that,” somebody who was _not_ the Hokage said.

Raimaru ignored him, as he had been instructed to respond only to the Hokage unless the Hokage himself gave explicit permission for one of his many aides to issue orders. And as he continued to remain where he was, he could hear somebody stifle a snort and somebody else fail to hold back a giggle. There may also have been a muttered, ‘Idiot,’ somewhere in there as well, but Raimaru had tuned out almost everything in order to focus on anything the Hokage might say.

“Please, get up,” the Hokage finally said, just as Raimaru’s back was starting to protest.

The Hokage’s eyes were crinkled with mirth when Raimaru chanced a quick glance up at him after straightening back up. The orange-wearing blond in the front glared at the Hokage, which Raimaru personally thought was sufficient grounds for capital punishment. But people in Konoha must be soft, if all that the Hokage did in response to that was crinkle his eyes even further and shrug at the blond.

“What’s your name?” the Hokage asked.

“Raimaru, at your service.”

“Well, Raimaru-kun, what do you know of my successor?”

Raimaru resisted the urge to frown. Was this another test? If he had known that part of his duties would include answering trivia questions about Konoha, he’d have read up more on its political climate. “I am afraid that I have not been keeping a close eye on the succession, Hokage-sama. Regretfully, most of what I know comes from hearsay.”

“Let me tell you about him, then,” the Hokage drawled. “He eats so much ramen that our local ramen stand makes half of its money from him, and his favourite way of winning battles is to talk his enemies out of them because he’s almost too soft for someone who makes his living through combat. When it doesn’t work, he relies on his favourite shadow clone jutsu far too recklessly and seems to have no understanding of ‘exhaustion’ until it knocks him off his feet. Thankfully, the allies he managed to talk some sense into tend to be there for him, which is probably the only reason why he’s stayed alive long enough to become Hokage. Some say that he’s exactly like our Fourth, his father, but I think he still has a long way to go, even if he has the hair and cloak down. He’s also really new to the job, so I’m currently stuck babysitting him whenever he leaves Konoha.

“So in short, he’s a bit stupid, and also stupidly strong, but his heart is in the right place. And he’s also right here.” With that, the sixth Hokage ruffled the hair of the blond and then slouched off toward the room the trade summit was to be held in. It took nearly all that Raimaru had not to stare at him as he went, because, if he was putting the pieces together correctly, Raimaru had been addressing the wrong person the entire time and couldn’t afford any further mistakes.

“Shall we, Hokage-sama?” the one in the mask said, and although Raimaru couldn’t see his face, it sounded like he was trying very hard not to laugh.

“See you around, Raimaru-kun!” the blond said, waving to Raimaru as he followed the masked person into the room for the negotiations, punching his shoulder on their way. “You bastard. That wasn’t very nice of you, taunting the poor boy,” the blond muttered.

“Your inauguration was last week. Kakashi’s retirement is literally the only thing he has ever been early for, which in itself is sufficiently noteworthy. And paired with your inauguration…” the masked man said, voice becoming too soft to hear once the doors closed behind them.

With the blond’s back to him, Raimaru realised that the oversized hat wasn’t just any hat but a specific, high-profile hat that only one person in all of the elemental nations had the right to wear at any one point in time. And that person wasn’t Hatake-sama.

And he also realised that the travel cloak wasn’t in fact a travel cloak but a specific, high-profile cloak embroidered with ‘Nanadaime Hokage,’ which only one person in all of the elemental nations had the right to wear, not just now but _ever_.

The Seventh Hokage.

Raimaru blinked at the only people left in the room with him—the girl with bright pink hair and the boy whose smile made shivers run up Raimaru’s arms. The girl pat his shoulder, smiling gently. “Nobody believed him at first when he said he was going to be Hokage, and even now there are people who can’t see him as anything more than a snot-nosed upstart. You’re not the first, and you probably won’t be the last. Don’t be too hung up on it.”

Raimaru felt very faint all of a sudden. He hoped that he wouldn’t be out of a job by the end of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think that Raimaru is in Fire Country's Daimyo's employ, which means that he's aware enough that he knows some of the important things (like that Konoha's Rokudaime Hokage is Kakashi), but still civilian enough not to keep up with every ninja news (such as what the recently inaugurated Nanadaime Hokage looks like). But it makes no difference if you think he's from any of the other countries. I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but it's still better than no chapter at all, right?
> 
>  **Next chapter** : Civilian Refugee (of the Fourth Shinobi War)


	6. Civilian Refugee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Seventh Hokage is fond of walking around his village under a transformation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's more serious than the rest. I promise the next one will be more lighthearted.

Kazuha was, in some ways, a little more wary of the new Hokage than most people. The nine-tailed fox had taken her husband and only son from her nearly twenty years ago, and to have its jinchuuriki leading her village was a somewhat…unpleasant idea. Yondaime’s son was not the beast itself, that she knew, but knowing and believing were two very different things.

It had hurt, watching the boy run around the village with that mischievous smile of his. Kazuha’s son could’ve been like that, could’ve been _alive_. Yondaime may have managed to seal the demon away into his son, but at least the boy hadn’t died. At least he got to grow up, pick up a kunai, and perform his first jutsu.

Sighing, Kazuha tugged the awning so that it extended to shade the bit of the street that was right in front of her shop. The pain had lessened with time, thankfully, but the reminder of what that boy had achieved—Hokage!—where her son never even had the chance was oftentimes the cause of one too many sleepless nights.

“Oh! Kazuha-san!”

Kazuha looked up from where she was pushing a rack into place, the paintings on it swaying a little before coming to rest. “Naoki-san!” she called back, greeting the man who was making his way through the early morning bustle to her shop.

“You’re opening your shop earlier than usual today. Want some help?” Naoki offered. He was a fine young man, the kind of person her husband was, and the kind of person she thought her son could’ve been. He had appeared around the same time war got so bad that Konoha was forced to start receiving refugees, and his unending cheer was something that everyone had been so desperately short of during the war.

She smiled. “If you don’t mind,” she said, gesturing to the racks of paintings still arranged tightly inside the shop, waiting to be pulled out onto the street for display.

“The usual?”

“Yes, thank you.” It was so nice of him, always dropping by. He’d been by often enough that he could probably tell when she sold a painting or put a new one up for sale. The same could be said for all of the other shops along this street, really. Naoki was the highlight of everyone’s morning—she liked to think that he was something of a second sunrise—lending a hand whenever he had time to spare and chatting away like the closet gossip that he was.

“So, Kazuha-san, anything new in your love life recently?” Naoki asked, and she could almost see his eyebrows wiggling even with her back to him.

“What are you talking about? An old woman like me? I’m past the age for youthful dalliances.”

“Ah, but you see, Kazuha-san, Ginbaki-san down the street seems to like you a lot,” Naoki said as he pulled out a rack, arranging it exactly where she would have herself.

Kazuha scoffed. “That old geezer likes every woman who walks past his shop.”

“That’s…not wrong. Ginbaki-san does strike me as the kind of guy who isn’t very picky. How about Testuya-san? He’s been fighting with Ginbaki-san over you a lot lately, ever since you put out that painting of this street with his shop in the corner.”

Kazuha rolled her eyes. “The day I let either one of them touch me is the day I die. But enough talk about me. What about you? Have you found yourself a nice young girl to settle down with yet? Why haven’t I ever heard of you bringing anyone home?”

Now, Kazuha couldn’t claim to be the kind of person who took pleasure regularly from other people’s embarrassment, but watching Naoki turn an earthy shade of red was still better entertainment than watching Ginbaki and Tetsuya bicker two shops down. “Well, I—that is to say, there is someone, but…”

Kazuha felt her eyebrows shoot up. This was new. But then, she hadn’t asked about his relationships before despite having known him for a few years, so maybe it was new only to _her_. “Really now? Tell me more about this undoubtedly wonderful woman who has stolen your heart.”

Naoki scratched the back of his head in a way that struck Kazuha as vaguely familiar the way the mannerisms of a commonly seen public figure were. “I’ve never known anybody more frustrating. I’m really happy though, even if it still feels like a dream sometimes. I was really lonely until we met, and we probably had the most stupidly ridiculous courtship in all of the elemental nations, but it’s all worth it in the end.”

“Not lonelier than this old woman, surely?”

“Actually, I probably was,” Naoki said, chortling a little. “I didn’t know why but my village was…well, it didn’t like me very much, so I didn’t have friends for a long time. The playgrounds are much better at night anyway—nobody to laugh at your scraped knees,” Naoki joked, but it fell flat when he saw how unamused Kazuha was. He hastily added, “But Konoha is very nice to me right now, and I’m very, very glad that I’m here, so it turned out all right in the end.”

Kazuha frowned. It wasn’t hard to tell that Naoki was giving her a watered down version of things. “I can’t imagine a village disliking a child for no reason, and you’re such a nice young man too. Did you ever find out why?”

“Yeah. Turns out it was something out of my control anyway, so I learned not to care too much. But it wasn’t all bad. I had a really nice teacher, and I eventually made some very good friends. There was also an old man who used to send people to keep an eye on me to make sure I didn’t just end up in a ditch without anyone noticing.”

Kazuha blinked. She could read between the lines well enough and what she saw worried her. What on earth was Naoki’s childhood like, that people had to watch out for him so that he didn’t _die_? What kind of monsters did the villagers have to be to not care if a child died? But at least Naoki had people who reached out, even if there hadn’t been too many. “Do you miss them?”

“I do miss the old man sometimes. But I’m still in touch with that teacher, and most of my friends are still alive and know where to find me, so I think I’m better off than most people.”

“And you’ve found somebody special, too,” Kazuha said, patting Naoki’s hand gently.

Naoki grinned at her. “Yeah, there’s that as well. I’m really lucky, actually, considering how many of my precious people were active shinobi during the war.”

“You’ve led a hard life. I’m glad you’re not alone anymore.”

“Me too, Kazuha-san. I hope you’ll find the same happiness that I have.”

All was peaceful for a moment, until the sound of people opening their shops was interrupted by somebody yelling at the top of her voice, “Uzumaki Naruto! Where the hell are you?!”

Kazuha sighed, eyeing a pink-haired woman who looked exceedingly irritated. She recognised her as the medic-nin who could sometimes be found nagging the Hokage into taking breaks. For a brief moment, she felt nothing but pity for the Hokage should this woman ever get her hands on him. “Ninja these days don’t know how to keep their voices down.”

Naoki gave a short, awkward laugh. “Seems like people are starting to get up and about. You need help with anything else?”

“No, I can handle the rest on my own. Get going—I don’t want you to be unemployed because I made you late for work.” Come to think of it, what _did_ Naoki do for a living? She hadn’t heard about that either.

“All right. I’ll see you soon, yeah?” Naoki said, walking backwards and waving at her.

“Bring your girl with you next time!” Kazuha shouted.

“Not a chance in hell!” Naoki yelled back, grinning.

Well. It was a long shot anyway. She hadn’t expected it to work.

Kazuha was about to rearrange a couple of paintings when, from of the corner of her eye, she saw Naoki walk up to the woman from earlier who was looking for the Hokage. Curious to know if this was Naoki’s girl, she continued watching as discreetly as she could manage. She had built up her career by being observant, after all, so a little lip-reading was not beyond her.

‘Where have you been?’ the woman hissed. ‘You’re supposed to be in your office, not pretending to be one of your shadow clones. Do you know how hard it is to find you under this stupid henge?’

‘That’s kind of the point?’ Naoki said. ‘Nobody’s supposed to be able to find me.’

‘Look, I don’t normally care if you want to keep an eye on the village, and I actually encourage it even though as your primary physician I should knock you over for sapping an inadvisable amount of chakra. But I expect the real you to be up there, not down here. I don’t want to be killed if _he_ finds you gutted in an alleyway. Leave the wandering to your clones and park your sorry ass on your throne or you’ll never get to wear that hat you like so much again.’

Naoki swallowed visibly, then followed the woman off, his dark hair fading to a familiar shade of blond.

A _very_ familiar shade of blond.

The village Naoki had been talking about hadn’t been some far off, already destroyed pile of rubble after all. And the people who were mean to him, those monsters, they weren’t distant, nameless strangers either.

They were people like Ginbaki, like Tetsuya.

People like Kazuha.

She sat heavily in a chair, staring out onto the street. A little boy ran past her shop, laughing, but instead of seeing her son as she usually did when children passed her by, this time she saw a boy with scars like whiskers on his cheeks.

She remembered that he was a small blond child, far too small for his age. He was laughing, yes, in a way that her son probably would’ve, but there had also been cuts on his face and bruises on his arms, and the clothes he wore were little more than dirty rags. He had caught a head of cabbage tossed at him once and shouted back an obnoxious, “Thank you!” but Kazuha also remembered that the shopkeeper hadn’t thrown the cabbage out of goodwill. It was just a convenient projectile for a vegetable seller.

But the boy just continued to laugh until he turned a corner, leaned against the wall, and let his shoulder sag, shaking as he slowly slid to the ground. For the first time since it happened, she remembered that his eyes were a little red when he finally got up and left, but the brilliant smile on his face—a smile that Kazuha only now realised was hurting him to wear—had easily erased everything else from her mind. It had only been so easy because she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that she’d seen what she had.

Many things had crossed Kazuha’s observant eyes, but it wasn’t until then that she realised how much of it had gone unnoticed, had been wilfully ignored in order to feed her resentment toward the Hokage, a man willing to protect the people who had once persecuted him. She would like to continue resenting this man who had become a Kage where her son never even had a fighting chance, but it hadn’t all fallen into his lap like a gift like she’d convinced herself it had, and it was hard to be jealous of someone who had to fight tooth and nail for every little bit of kindness.

Kindness that Kazuha hadn’t shown him; kindness that was long overdue.

Uzumaki Naruto—whom she knew as the kind and cheerful Naoki—was a far greater man than she ever knew, and perhaps it was time she started acting like he was _her_ Hokage, not just one in a long line of succession, and not just a ghost of what her son could’ve been. Because, in truth, she was glad that her son never had to live through the abuse that her Hokage suffered at the hands of his village. And if he did she didn’t know if he could still find room in his heart to love it enough to want to protect it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really, _really_ like Pyralis_Anacreon's take on how Hokage Naruto would spam clones to keep tabs on Konoha in [The Tale of Naruto Uzumaki](http://archiveofourown.org/series/493657). If you haven't read that series, please do. It's hilarious.
> 
>  **Next chapter** : Hokage Impersonator  
> ("Hokage Impersonator" is a bit misleading because there's nothing sinister, just Naruto accidentally acquiring some genin who don't believe he's who he says he is.)


	7. Hokage Impersonator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a genin team is accidentally acquired.

Kai didn’t know how Nari convinced this man to help them, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Especially not if said horse had failed the Academy’s graduation exam three times (a fact that, bafflingly, he didn’t seem too ashamed of) and still managed to wipe the floor with both Kai and Nari every time they challenged him to a two-on-one spar. (They’d learned very early on that one-on-one was asking for a death sentence.) He even had sufficient attention to spare while sparring for correcting their stances and regaling stories of the outrageous pranks he’d pulled off in his misspent youth. Kai didn’t believe a single one, of course, because there was no way an Academy student could have been capable of vandalising the entire Hokage monument without getting caught halfway. But he stayed anyway because even an irreverent braggart of an instructor was better than no instructor at all.

It was all his stupid jounin-sensei’s fault, really. If he hadn’t made himself into an amputee by stepping on an exploding tag during practice, they’d still have a teacher. But because he _had_ made himself into an amputee, not only was Kai down one jounin-sensei, he was also down one teammate because Takamori had taken one look at their legless teacher and decided that he wasn’t cut out to be a ninja after all. So until they were reassigned, Kai and Nari had to take their training into their own hands, which at the moment meant being whipped into shape by an Academy dropout who actually taught better than their jounin-sensei ever did.

“And that’s how you walk up trees. Give it a go,” said the gift horse who never seemed to leave Training Ground 3 no matter how late it was.

“If I manage to climb to the top by sundown, will you tell us your name?” Kai said, one foot already on a tree, chakra pushed gently through its sole.

“I told you, my name is Uzumaki Naruto.”

“Cut the bullshit, old man. You’re here all the time. The Hokage is too busy to spend all day training. And you’re not even a real ninja. We want to know your real name,” said an Academy student who had actually found the gift horse before Nari did. Kai would’ve preferred not to fall off a tree in front of a pre-genin, but Oka had been training with the gift horse for months before Nari roped the gift horse into teaching them so he couldn’t in good conscience ask the boy to leave. Oka charged up his tree and managed two quick steps before tumbling back down.

“You know that there are ways to be in two places at once, right? Oka, don’t run. This isn’t a sprinting exercise. Watch Kai. He’s doing it right,” the gift horse said. “This is because I failed the graduation exam three times, isn’t it? I swear I’m actually a qualified ninja, you know. I have a registration number and everything.”

“You’re just gonna give us the Hokage’s number if we ask,” Nari said, hanging upside down from the branches by the soles of her feet. She’d been able to walk up trees for as long as Kai had known her, so the gift horse was having her complete a chakra control obstacle course that included walking in a spiral around a branch and tiptoeing on water. “And everyone knows that if you fail three times you’re not allowed to take the test again. So obviously you’re not a ninja, even if you are very good at doing ninja stuff. Where’d you learn all this anyway?”

The gift horse threw his hands up. “There’s no winning with you brats. I learned it from my jounin-sensei, but, since none of you believe me, where I learned to do ‘ninja stuff’ is none of your business. Nari, stop pretending to be tired. I know you have more chakra than that. Kai, you’re going to need to compensate for the unevenness of the bark with every step. Applying the same amount of chakra every time won’t work. Work with the tree, not against it.”

Kai adjusted his footing and took another step. Someday, he’d find out just who the gift horse was by beating—or, as the case was, betting—the truth out of him. Until then, he needed the gift horse’s inexplicable expertise to get good enough.

\---

“Tomorrow is Oka’s graduation exam, so I have something special for the three of you today,” the gift horse told them when they were all gathered at Training Ground 3 after the Academy let out for the day.

“Please don’t be ramen. Please don’t be ramen,” Oka muttered under his breath. Kai tried to empathise with him but free food was free food, and if the gift horse wanted to give them free ramen he wasn’t about to say no. His stomach hadn’t been quite so well fed since Nari impressed the gift horse by running up a waterfall on her first attempt and earned them all-you-can-eat ramen coupons at Ichiraku’s.

“It’s something less delicious but just as important. This,” the gift horse said, brandishing a sheet of paper with a wide grin, “is form A28-A. I’ve filled it in for you and all you three have to do is say yes so I can file it.”

“I’ve never heard of form A28-A,” Nari said, shuffling closer to the gift horse to get a better look.

“That’s because it’s used mostly by Academy teachers. It’s a genin team allocation form. You and Kai still don’t have a team yet and I figured that you wouldn’t want to have to get used to a new team dynamic, so I asked the people in charge for a favour, and here we are. Do you want it or not?”

“We don’t even know if Oka’s going to pass,” Kai said. Oka’s taijutsu may be impressive, but his chakra stores were pitiful to the point of being nearly non-existent. Making a single clone exhausted him. At this rate, Oka wouldn’t have much of a choice but to specialise in something like sealing if he didn’t want to end up ‘youthful and vigorous’ like that green-spandex-wearing jounin whose idea of a warm up was ten laps around Konoha. On his fingers. Balancing weights heavier than himself on each leg.

“Have a little faith, asshole! I can do the Academy Three just fine!”

“You barely passed the last mock written test,” Nari pointed out.

“Play nice, now. You need a functional three-man genin team to take the chuunin exam. Kai and Nari will almost definitely be assigned a fresh Academy graduate, so why not just go with the enemy you know rather than the enemy you don’t?”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying works, sensei,” Nari said, laughing.

The gift horse waved the insult to his intelligence off with the same ease he used to bat away all of Kai’s attacks. “I was never any good at studying. Now, do I or do I not have your agreement?”

“Who’s going to be our jounin-sensei?” Kai asked.

“A panel will make that decision after the teams are finalised. You can also put in a request using form A28-C, but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the jounin you asked for. So is that a yes from you about being on the same team as Oka?”

“Yes, fine. At least we already know how to compensate for what he sucks at.”

That earned him a punch to the head, but he’d been training with Oka for months by then and could see it coming. Having Oka on his team probably wouldn’t be a complete disaster. Now all he had to do was find form A28-C, try his luck at requesting a non-ninja as their jounin-sensei (even though by definition a jounin-sensei had to be a jounin-level _ninja_ ), and he wouldn’t even have to get used to a new teacher either.

\---

“Kai, Nari. What can I do for you today?” Iruka-sensei asked, looking mildly surprised to see his former students at his office door.

“Where do we turn in form A28-C?”

“What?”

“Form A28-C,” Nari repeated.

Iruka-sensei appeared to take a while to recall what the form was for. When he did, he narrowed his eyes at them. “You realise that this is highly unusual? Most genin don’t choose their jounin-sensei.”

“Yeah, but we’ve already been training with this one guy and we don’t really want another teacher,” Kai said, shrugging. “He’s better than our last one.”

Iruka-sensei stretched out a hand toward them, palm up. “Show me the form.”

Nari wordlessly pressed it into Iruka-sensei’s hand. They’d filled it in as well as they could, but they mostly just ended up writing things like ‘calls himself the Hokage’ and ‘we don’t know his real name’ and ‘actually we’re not even sure if he’s from Konoha.’

Kai tracked Iruka-sensei’s eyes as he started reading the form, stopped after a couple of lines, reread from the start again. And again.

“Nari, which training ground does this person use?”

“Training Ground 3. Why?”

Iruka-sensei sighed and got up from his desk. “You two, follow me.”

If they hadn’t just been told to follow, they wouldn’t have thought that they were expected to. Iruka-sensei was fast in a way he never was unless a particularly foolish pre-genin had accidentally stuck a kunai in their eye during target practice and needed immediate medical attention. As much as Kai hated to admit it, he was still short and he wouldn’t have kept up if Nari hadn’t picked him up and carried him under one arm.

When Kai and Nari finally caught up to Iruka-sensei, they found themselves in front of the Hokage’s office. The doors were wide open and they could see Iruka-sensei slamming the form onto the Hokage’s table, sending stacks of paper flying.

“Naruto. What the hell is this,” Iruka-sensei demanded.

“Uh. What _is_ that?” the Hokage said, trying to pry Iruka-sensei’s fingers off the form to get a better look.

“Two of my former students just handed me form A28-C requesting a Hokage impersonator as their jounin-sensei. Apparently they’ve been training with him for the better part of six months.”

The Hokage laughed nervously. “Their names wouldn’t happen to be Kai and Nari, would they?”

“Why yes, Naruto. Their names do happen to be Kai and Nari.”

The Hokage peered around Iruka-sensei to address Kai and Nari directly. “You know that your jounin-sensei is supposed to be jounin-ranked, right?”

“But they don’t _have_ to be,” Kai said. “I read the official specifications for the formation of genin teams, and our proposal fulfils every requirement. We’re just…not sure he’s from Konoha.”

“That’s not going to be a problem,” the Hokage said, waving it off in a way that echoed strongly of the gift horse. “What _is_ a problem is that I can’t leave Konoha with you on C-rank missions. I won’t leave the village under-protected, even if this _is_ a time of peace.”

“Wait, what?” Kai blurted out.

The Hokage continued to talk as if Kai hadn’t said anything. “How about I do this the same way I’ve been training you? I can send a shadow clone with you, even for D-ranks. That way, I’ll be able to get regular updates and give you advice without Crow getting on my case about putting myself in unnecessary danger.”

Kai hoped that he was imagining the killing intent that the ANBU with the crow mask was directing at the Hokage. Surely the Hokage knew better than to entrust his life to somebody who wanted him dead, right?

“You mean he’s actually you? I mean, you’re actually the Hokage?” Nari asked, incredulous. She pinched her arm, then Kai’s as well for good measure when Kai continued to gape in a manner that spoke of a person who had just had his entire worldview rearranged. The fact that the Hokage did not sound at all confused about what was going on had strong implications that meant that Kai had to rewrite all he knew about the gift horse, starting with the fact that the gift horse was in all likelihood exactly who he claimed he was.

“Uh, yes? I kept telling you, but none of you would listen. Well, technically I wasn’t _actually_ at the training ground so it wasn’t strictly speaking me, but—”

“Hokage-sama,” Iruka-sensei interrupted, kneading the space between his brows, “would you like to explain how you ended up instructing these two while pretending to impersonate yourself? I’m sure your security detail will be very interested to know that you’ve been sneaking off to train genin. In addition, if you have so much time on your hands that you have to find ways to entertain yourself, I’m sure the council will be happy to arrange for more paperwork to be brought to you.”

“Shadow clones!” the Hokage said, a bit too loudly for the size of the room. “It wasn’t me! I swear I was safely tucked away in my office during work hours and always have two ANBU guards with me at all times. And I’m also completely busy with work. Just ask Shikamaru.” The Hokage gestured to a man on his left.

Shikamaru-san looked up from his own pile of paperwork. “He’s been complaining that there’s too much. Don’t give him any more or it’ll just be more troublesome for me,” he said, then looked back down, efficiently ignoring everybody else in the room using the often underestimated power of the Not Caring Jutsu. Kai hoped to one day be just as unflappable as him.

“Naruto.”

The Hokage almost seemed to cower when Iruka-sensei turned the full force of his disapproving teacher glare, which had a long history of intimidating disrespectful pre-genin into submission, on him. Apparently it worked just as well on a Hokage. “Yes, Iruka-sensei?”

“You have three days to settle this and when I announce the teams nobody had better be under the impression that they’re getting trained by an overqualified civilian of unknown loyalty.”

\---

One week later when team assignments were announced, Kai and Nari once again found themselves without a jounin-sensei.

They had a _kage_ -sensei instead.

On one hand, it seemed unfair to the rest of the genin teams, but on the other hand, they were being taught by a shadow clone that was always one misaimed shuriken away from being dispelled. They’d learned it the hard way when they went on their first C-rank and had to wait an entire afternoon for a replacement clone to arrive after a run in with bandits wielding pointy objects. There were some kinks in the whole taught-by-a-shadow-clone system that needed to be worked out, but for the time being having two shadow clones was a working quick fix. Even if they fought very loudly over who was the actual sensei and who was the backup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, technically, nobody was under the impression that they were getting trained by an overqualified civilian of unknown loyalty, but that certainly didn’t stop Iruka from eviscerating Naruto anyway, Hokage or not.
> 
>  **Next chapter** : Nidaime Uzukage (The Second Uzukage)


	8. Nidaime Uzukage, Uzumaki Arashi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which an old grudge is settled and a village is rebuilt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some context that I made up (*cough* co-opted from another fic*cough*): When Uzushiogakure was still around, their second Uzukage was Uzumaki Arashi. Then everything went to hell, and survivors scattered everywhere.

Kamon had been from a village, once. It had been a very long time since he last felt properly affiliated with any. There was something about watching your village get razed to the ground that never really went away, and on bad nights Kamon still saw the Uzukage’s office go up in flames, sparks a bright contrast against the smoke in the air and his lungs.

He had been there when Iwa and Kiri shinobi took down his Uzukage, was still there when his Uzukage’s blood spread across the ground and seeped into its cracks. He remembered the way the setting sun had painted everything that wasn’t already steeped in the blood of his people a shade of red that he had never thought of as ugly until then. The sky was clear and the air still, and Kamon had hoped that when he got up he’d see his Uzukage picking his way over the rubble, battered but alive, and asking Kamon if he’d help him rebuild Uzushiogakure together.

Instead, he’d found the charred remains of his Uzukage’s cloak, little white pieces of cloth with the characters for ‘two’ and ‘whirlpool’ stitched onto them. He’d returned many times over the years to bury any body that wasn’t wearing a Kiri or Iwa hitai-ate, but he hadn’t been able to find the rest of the cloak (or any part of _him_ ) no matter how many cracked pillars he’d overturned.

On the worst nights, however, he felt nothing but hatred for Konoha. They’d been allies; Uzushio had fought for Konoha, and Konoha had promised to help Uzushio, but where were they when his Uzukage had been forced to single-handedly hold off the invading forces so that civilians could evacuate? Where were they when his Uzukage sent for help? Where were they when Kamon watched his Uzukage desperately fire off jutsu after jutsu until there wasn’t even enough chakra left to keep him alive?

Most of Uzushio’s people had fled and changed their names to avoid being hunted down. After all, the art of sealing hadn’t died with the village—it still lived on in her people and could still be used against her enemies. But it just wasn’t the same now that her people were spread thin across the elemental nations. They were far too broken, and regrouping without an Uzukage ran the risk of being destroyed before they could even lay the first brick to restore Uzushio.

And besides, Kamon didn’t think that anyone who remembered what happened would be able to look at a new Uzukage and think of them as anything but a shadow of Nidaime Uzukage, Uzumaki Arashi. Those sea-blue eyes and wild red hair had been synonymous with Uzukage for so long that anybody else would be a pale imitation.

But there wasn’t any point in thinking all of this. The Uzushio that Kamon knew no longer existed except in his memories, and his Uzukage would’ve wanted his people to live, especially after his sacrifice. So, Kamon wiped his forehead with the towel around his neck and hefted a crate of watermelons up onto his cart. He would live, just as his Uzukage had wished when he gave himself so that his people may survive.

It was getting to about midday in Suna, and the sparkle of sun on sand reminded Kamon a little of the beaches of Uzushio. He used to lie on the sand and bask in the afternoon warmth during break, but that had been before the invasion started. It was a lot more scorching in Suna, though, and it would never be home without the salty sea breeze that reached even the Uzukage’s office, situated as it had been further away from the sea than nearly any other building.

Kamon repositioned his hat so that it wasn’t in his eyes, dabbing at his neck with a towel, and it was then that a head of bright red hair caught his eye.

Now, red hair wasn’t exactly uncommon in Suna, but that particular shade of red used to only be found within the Uzumaki clan. And coupled with the way the man held himself…

“Arashi-sama!” Kamon cried before he even realised that he’d opened his mouth. “Uzumaki Arashi-sama!”

The man stopped, turned, and Kamon’s breath caught so sharply in his throat that he might have choked a little.

He knew that the man couldn’t be his Uzukage—Kamon had watched Arashi-sama’s life steal out of him through injuries that even their best medic would never have been able to heal. This man looked so young, too. Younger, in fact, than Arashi-sama had been when Uzushio had fallen. But he gave Kamon the same feeling that Arashi-sama did; it felt like the calm in the centre of a storm, steady and gentle but with the ability to shift into something far deadlier faster than most people could blink.

“Uzumaki Arashi?” the man said, as if testing the weight of the last Uzukage’s name on his tongue.

“I apologise. I have mistaken you for someone I once knew,” Kamon said, bowing a little and biting down on the bitterness that swelled in his throat. Of course it wasn’t Arashi-sama. What had Kamon been thinking?

“No, don’t. I…I would like to know more about this person. This Uzumaki Arashi.”

It was times like this that made Kamon think that he'd been living his entire life under a genjutsu. Nobody seemed to know about Uzushio anymore even though she had been Konoha’s greatest ally and a renowned village in her own right. Small though she had been, the skills of her people had been highly sought after by the largest hidden villages, and one would have been hard pressed to find any competent shinobi who had never heard of Uzushiogakure, the Hidden Village in the Whirlpools. Now, there was nothing left of her except a pile of rubble and a few scattered memories that were already beginning to fade.

“He was my Uzukage.”

The man’s eyes went large and round, blue eyes lighting up the same way Arashi-sama’s did when he found a particularly interesting seal. “Oh. Uzushiogakure.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry about what happened,” the man offered, and for once Kamon actually saw a face as twisted in sorrow as his own on somebody not from Uzushio.

“It was a long time ago.”

“That doesn’t make the pain any better. We all lost family,” the man said.

Kamon looked up sharply. He had suspected, but…yes. That strong jawline and those stubborn eyes were definitely an Uzumaki trademark.

“Uzumaki…?”

“Yeah. I never knew my family, but I think my mother may have known the Nidaime. Or known _about_ him, at least.”

“There aren’t many who still go by that name. Where do you come from? You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”

“I was raised in Konoha.”

That gave Kamon pause. On one hand, this was an Uzumaki, one of his Uzukage’s last remaining relatives who still carried the name proudly. On the other hand, he was from Konoha, the ally that had abandoned them when push came to shove and then erased them from their history books to cover up their betrayal.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get there in time,” the man apologised, seemingly on behalf of Konoha even though he couldn’t be old enough to have been alive when the invasion had happened, and as such had no reason to feel responsible enough to warrant an apology. It was also clear where the man’s loyalties lay. While he may be an Uzumaki by blood, he belonged to Konoha. A god somewhere must be laughing at the irony.

“At least somebody remembers us.”

“We’re writing Uzushio back into the textbooks. It may not be much, and it may be too late, but every child in Konoha will know of Uzushio and her people when we’re done.”

“The new Hokage’s work?”

The man smiled, lips twitching like a badly kept secret was threatening to burst from them at any second. “He’s much more invested in preserving Uzushio than the average Kage.”

“It’s time somebody is. But it’s too little and far too late.”

“I acknowledge that it won’t bring her back, but I think someday Uzushio might be able to call her people home. A village never really dies until everyone who remembers her is gone, after all. If you can find her people, perhaps the Hokage will assist any rebuilding efforts. As a final thank you,” the man told Kamon. “Konoha has made many mistakes, some worse than others. Will you let us make this up to you?”

Kamon snorted. “That’ll be the day,” he said, but did not dismiss it. After the last war, countries were much more open to negotiation and committed to peace. If there was ever any time to gather Uzushio’s people, there may not be a better time than now. “I’ll think about it.”

“Please do.”

“Who are you? I want to know the name of Arashi-sama’s relative.”

The man grinned, and all at once Kamon remembered the times when Arashi-sama had been a little less dignified, a little more mischievous, and a whole lot less stately than the Uzukage in Kamon’s memories tended to be. Arashi-sama hadn’t just been a pillar of strength—he had been cheerful and ridiculous, too, embodying the very spirit of Uzushiogakure. In his absence, Kamon had clung onto the Uzukage and not the person, had burned the vision of Arashi-sama’s murderous eyes and defiant back into his mind, a reminder of Uzushio’s downfall and all that he had lost. But now, with the chance of rebuilding finally becoming something more than a pipe dream, perhaps it was time to let go of Arashi-sama, the Storm God of Uzushio, and embrace the happiness that once made Uzushio home to him and to so many others.

“Uzumaki Naruto,” the man said, grinning further. “I hope to see you in Konoha soon! I’m sure the Hokage won’t turn you down.”

Kamon watched Uzumaki Naruto go, and wondered for a moment if he had heard right, because there had never been an account of a red-haired Hokage for all that they led a village in Fire Country.

\---

Nearly half a decade later and with the support of people who had also once called and will once again have the chance to call Uzushio their home, he walked, back straight and head high, into the Nanadaime Hokage’s office and called in the favour that he’d been offered on a scorching street in Suna. Nanadaime Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto, definitely had yellow hair, but his face had not changed at all. And when the sun set outside the window behind him, his hair glowed a brilliant red, just like Arashi-sama’s once had.

The Nanadaime Hokage rose from his seat, smiled, and said, “Sandaime Uzukage Honryuu Kamon, welcome to Konohagakure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *slams fist on table* I need more Uzukage Naruto fics. (Stormborn by blackkat was So Good.) But he's already Hokage here so I can't change that. He's probably visiting Gaara in this chapter. And were Kamon and Arashi together? Who knows. Kamon certainly does seem very devoted to his Kage. Anyway, I feel like I should point out that the newly elected Sandaime Uzukage Kamon's name is just as punny as Naruto's. Honryuu means 'torrent', kamon means 'whirlpool design'. Clearly I need to be more creative with names.
> 
>  **Next chapter** : Academy Instructor


	9. Head Teacher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which civilians are unaware that the Hokage’s office and the Ninja Academy share a compound.

“Honey, I don’t think this is the proper protocol for enrolling our daughter into their Academy,” Heichi said, fidgeting under the curious gazes of people walking in and out of the doors of Konoha’s Ninja Academy.

“Do be quiet, Heichi. Unless you know what the proper channel for this sort of thing is, this is our best bet,” his wife snapped.

“That’s right, papa. I asked Fumi-chan and she said her family just walked up and asked the Head Teacher. I don’t think there _are_ proper channels,” his daughter added, bouncing on her feet. “Can we go in now?”

“But, honey, dear, light of my life, you can’t honestly expect to enrol our daughter by strong arming their Head Teacher. They’re ninja! They’ll kill you!” Heichi eyed the seven faces carved into the cliff that towered over the Academy, impossibly large and unnerving. Konoha must be insane to want giant pupil-less stone faces staring at them at every hour of every day, and a village full of people like this was not something Heichi wanted anything to do with. He could barely stand to look into his normal-sized wife’s non-pupil-less eyes without wanting to flee.

Miho waved her husband’s concerns off. “They’re ninja, so they can handle me strong arming them. If they can’t, they’re weak, and I don’t want Shiho attending their Academy.” Heichi didn’t really understand how his wife mistook his worry for her for worry for the ninja who staffed this place, but he had to admit that she had a valid point. She had once cowed a ninja with nothing but a spatula and a pot of half-cooked noodles. He didn’t know how she’d done it, and to be honest he didn’t really want to.

Shiho gasped in horror. “Mama you can’t mean that! I want to go here!”

“I am a woman of my word. Now, let’s go find that Head Teacher and convince them that our Shiho deserves a place in their school and that they should be honoured to have her,” Miho said firmly, then grabbed her daughter and husband’s arms and dragged them inside.

“I want to see your Head Teacher,” she said to a man shuffling past her holding a box full of scratched shuriken.

The man stared at her for a bit with disinterested eyes, which was rude, then looked her up and down. His gaze shifted to her husband and her daughter, giving them each a quick onceover as well. Then, apparently satisfied with what he’d seen, he said, “Down the corridor, left turn at the potted plant, up the stairs on the right five doors down. He’ll be in the north-most room.”

Miho hurried off, her grip on her husband and daughter never faltering.

“Thank you!” Heichi called back to the man. _Somebody_ in this family had to have some modicum of courtesy, even if the deficit accumulated by the rest far exceed his ability to compensate.

“Troublesome,” the man muttered, and continued on his way.

It took Heichi some time to remember that his wife had the directionality of a compass without a needle, but by then it was far too late and they were lost. At least he could still see the creepy rock faces through the windows, so he knew which side of the building they were on even if there was a very real chance that his wife had accidentally walked them into a different building altogether.

“My darling, my sweetheart, are you sure you know where you’re going?”

“I’ll know when I get there.”

Heichi sighed. There was no hope for their daughter as a ninja if she took after her mother. “That’s not how this is supposed to work, dearest mine.”

“It’ll work how I say it does,” Miho said. “And even if it doesn’t I’ll find someone who will make it.”

Which, of course, was exactly when a man with bright yellow hair made it around the corner and was pounced on by Heichi’s wife. The masked person behind the yellow-haired man turned disquietingly blank eyes on them, and Heichi could feel his life expectancy wither to half of what it had been originally.

“I want to see your Head Teacher,” Miho said for the second time that day. “One of your other teachers gave terrible directions.”

The man blinked, eyes flicking between Heichi, Miho, and their daughter in a fashion eerily similar to the man with the box of shuriken. “Why should I let you?”

“Nobody ‘lets’ me do anything. I either do it, or I don’t.”

Heichi wanted to bury his head in the ground for a hundred years. “Please forgive her. We’re not from Konoha, but my wife merely wishes to enrol our daughter into your Academy. We mean no harm.”

“Well in that case, please step into my office,” the man told them, pushing open the doors beside him. To the masked man, he said, “Crow, send for Iruka-sensei.”

Shiho’s jaw dropped open when one masked man suddenly became two masked men, and then one masked man again when the other vanished immediately in a swirl of leaves. She gaped a bit longer after the masked man was gone, then turned to stare at her father. “Papa, did you see that? A real ninja! Doing real ninja things!”

“Yes, Shiho, I did see that. I believe Fumi-chan said it was a jutsu. Now, close your mouth—you’re attracting flies.”

Shiho’s mouth clicked shut so hard that Heichi winced.

“You have a very spirited daughter,” the yellow-haired man said, smiling. “That’s good. We like those. I’m sorry about the lack of chairs. I don’t usually expect to have meetings with civilians here. Can I get you anything? Tea?”

“It’s rude to make your guests stand,” Miho huffed, looking around with narrowed eyes that screamed with disapproval at the stacks of papers in the office.

“We’re fine, thank you,” Heichi said, wondering if Head Teachers of other ninja schools had offices quite as expansive as this while somehow still managing to make it look cluttered.

“Right, on to business. So, what’s the name of our aspiring shinobi?”

“I’m Shiho! I want to be the best ninja in the world!”

The Head Teacher threaded his fingers together and propped his chin up on them. “You share the same goal as a lot of other children, Shiho-chan. Some of those children come from established ninja clans. What makes you think you can be better than them?”

“Of course Shiho can do it! Why, she’s—” Miho started to say, indignance scrawled all over her face, but Shiho interrupted her.

“Mama, I’m the one going to this school,” Shiho said. Then, she turned to the Head Teacher. “I will learn everything! Ninja school is so much more fun than normal school—I won’t ever slack off! I’ll practise my taijutsu at home, and do all of my homework, and I’ll even sharpen my kunai every day. I’ll show you that I can be the best!”

“All those are very good, but you’ve forgotten the most important thing about being a shinobi.”

“I’ll make sure to train my chakra as well!” Shiho promised, nodding stubbornly.

“Yes, chakra is one of the most important things, but it’s not _the_ most important. Did you know that Konoha has a jounin who can’t use ninjutsu?”

“Really?”

“Really. The most important thing about being a shinobi isn’t your strength or your power, it’s your heart. To be a shinobi of Konoha, you must—”

Suddenly, the door slammed open, and an irate-looking man stormed in, the scar on his face warping around the skin of his scrunched nose.

“Just what on earth are you telling my impressionable future student, Hokage-sama!”

The man at the desk, whom Heichi was starting to realise with growing dread wasn’t actually the Head Teacher because Head Teachers didn’t generally get called ‘Hokage-sama’ or (as Heichi realised after a quick glance to the cliff outside the window) have their faces carved into rocks, just laughed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think Naruto actually enjoys being mistaken for not being a Hokage. It's like a prank he doesn't even need to work for because people just keep handing it to him on a silver platter. :/
> 
>  **Next chapter** : Retired Kunoichi


	10. Retired Kunoichi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a jounin-sensei realises that the retired kunoichi with kids in the Chuunin Exam is neither retired nor a kunoichi.

He met her on a swing.

Well. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he met her while _she_ was on a swing and _he_ was on his way to a briefing for foreign jounin-sensei before the Chuunin Exam officially commenced. She was gazing at the doors of Konoha’s Ninja Academy, hair a long, yellow banner behind her, and Sajou was immediately smitten.

“Are you waiting for somebody?” Sajou asked as a conversation starter. He hoped she wasn’t.

She didn’t startle at his sudden appearance, which meant that she probably had some ninja training and had sensed him coming. But there was no hitai-ate in sight—off duty, maybe, or even retired? “Not really. I just enjoy sitting here,” she said, smiling up at him. She must have seen his hitai-ate, because she asked, “Are you here for the Chuunin Exam?”

“I’m a jounin-sensei,” he said, puffing his chest out a little. A little bragging couldn’t hurt, right? Women liked capable men, right?

She grinned, and Sajou fell a little bit in love with how devious her smile was. “Good luck. This batch of Konoha genin is very good. They’re much better than I was, at any rate.”

“I’m sure you were excellent,” Sajou offered. He was trying not to simper, he really was, but he had a bad habit of turning off all higher brain functions when faced with such beauty.

The snort that she surprised him with shouldn’t have been be that attractive. “I was horrible—my jounin-sensei would’ve told you that. I got better, obviously, but fat load of good that did me,” she said. “I never officially made chuunin, but I’m already permanently on the wrong side of the Mission Desk.”

“Just because you’re not on field duty doesn’t mean that your job isn’t important,” Sajou said. He ventured to place a hand on her shoulder in a show of support, but she twisted out of his reach.

Her laughter was unexpectedly thick, nothing like the light, tinkling sounds most women made. As she got up, she said, “Isn’t there somewhere you should be getting to, jounin-sensei?”

He sighed. “Regretfully. I’ll see you around?”

“I think we’ll be seeing each other quite a bit in the coming month.” With one last smile, wide and unabashed and vibrant, she flickered away.

He hadn’t told her about the briefing, but it pleased him disproportionately to know that she wasn’t just beautiful but also well informed and observant, even if she was still a genin. Whistling, he made his way into the Academy. It wouldn’t do to keep the Hokage and the other jounin-sensei waiting no matter how much he wanted to bask in his newfound love.

\---

“How’s your team doing?”

Sajou startled. Tearing his eyes away from the screens in the observation room, he saw that she had managed to get behind him without him noticing. That hadn’t happened to him in a really long time—it really spoke volumes about how anxious he was.

“Not bad, but not as well as I’d hoped. The next round will be tough even if they pass this one. You’re right about how good the Konoha genin are.”

She flipped her hair. “Of course I am. Those are my kids.”

Sajou’s neck protested at how quickly he snapped his head around to look at her. “All _fifteen_ of them?”

“No, of course not,” she said, laughing her hearty laugh that made her chest heave in a way that Sajou had to fight not to stare at. “Just three, naturally. Well, actually, you weren’t entirely wrong. I guess you _could_ say that they’re all mine…” she continued saying, but Sajou was having some difficulty paying attention to anything.

She had children. Why hadn’t he thought of that before? It wouldn’t be unusual for a woman like her to be attached, and the fact that she’d retired from active duty despite looking healthy and hale meant that something other than an injury had taken her off the field. Which implied that she had children because, after death, it was the most common cause of kunoichi retirement.

Which further implied that she had a husband and was likely much older than she looked.

Great. Just great.

He turned back to the screens only to see his team arguing over the edibility of a brightly coloured mushroom that was clearly poisonous. Fantastic. His team was doing just as well as his love life.

\---

Nearly a month later, Sajou found her looking for a seat in the arena minutes before the first match was scheduled to begin. He waved her over to the empty one next to him. Although she’d said that they’d be seeing a lot of each other over the course of the Chuunin Exam back whey they’d first met at the swing, he’d probably seen less of her than he had of the Hokage. Finally seeing her again, and in such a crowded space too, was a pleasant surprise.

“Thanks. If I’d known that it would be this difficult to find a seat I’d have come earlier. The turnout’s so much bigger than I expected,” she grumbled. “Your kid’s up first, right? The Yase girl, with blue hair?”

“Is that what she’s known as amongst Konoha ninja? The girl with blue hair?” Perhaps Sajou should have had her dye her hair some inconspicuous shade of brown to avoid being so easily recognisable. The luxury of looking distinctive belonged only to those who were good enough to handle almost any enemy that spotted them, and right now Yase was nowhere near that level.

She shrugged. “At least it’s just her hair. Mine has skin so pale it shines blue under the right light, and that’s after I tried everything to get him to tan.”

Sajou picked the boy out easily from the line-up. “Red hair, red clothes, scrolls spilling out of every pocket?” He didn’t look a lot like her. Sajou quashed the thought that the boy probably took after his father, which was a shame given how beautiful his mother’s tan skin was.

“That’s him. You’ll want to watch out for his seals. Oka’s better than most chuunin and that’s not even taking into account how quickly he draws them while using taijutsu. With some experience, he could probably take on an entire four-man cell with only a brush and something flat to draw on. He fights right after Yase.”

“Against Suna’s Fueno Azuhi? That girl literally spits fire. Is this place even fireproof?” Sajou looked doubtfully at the wooden benches and beams of the arena, and then at the forests a distance away that surrounded Konoha.

“You’re in a ninja village, in Fire Country. If something isn’t fireproof, it will be after the first time it goes up in flames. Oh, look, Yase is getting ready. Can I expect a very thorough commentary about her every move?”

Sajou snorted. “You’re in a ninja village, talking to someone who belongs to another ninja village. What makes you think I’ll tell you anything?”

She shrugged. “I have a pretty face. It was worth a shot.”

It was somewhat terrifying how right she was. Sajou suddenly felt very worried for his village’s secrets, but it wasn’t strong enough to keep him away from her magnetic presence.

\---

The last match of the day was drawing to a close. Sajou was ready to crawl into a hole and drink his misery away after being on the receiving end of her proudly bragging about her three children, all of whom looked nothing like her or each other at all. Her husband had better love her a lot, or Sajou wouldn’t hesitate to steal her from under his nose.

“How did the kids do?”

Sajou startled. What was with Konoha ninja and creeping up on him undetected? Was he losing his touch or was there something in the water here? He turned around. The man had dark eyes and even darker hair, and something about the way he looked was familiar, like Sajou had seen him before only in passing but should recognise him anyway.

“You were watching. How do you think they did?”

“Not horribly, but Kai could definitely have done better.”

“I thought so too. He should’ve made chuunin a long time ago if the team hadn’t always been in the wrong place at the wrong time and missed all those exams before.” She leaned back into the man, and he placed a hand on her shoulder. There was tenderness in her eyes that Sajou dearly wished she would show him instead.

“This must be the father,” Sajou said, for lack of anything else to say.

“What?” she said, startled. “Whose father?”

Sajou’s brows drew together in confusion. “Your children’s? Oka and Nari and Kai’s?

She stared at him for a second that seemed to stretch into an eternity. “I’m not a mother, Sajou-sensei,” she finally said.

“But—”

The man snorted, interrupting Sajou’s growing bewilderment. “Why am I not surprised?”

She glared at him, retorting, “Hey, just because I—”

“Sensei!” somebody yelled, high and loud, and Sajou prayed for his ears. “Sensei! How did I do? Did you see that? I took down that Kumo-nin with the jutsu Sakura-san taught me!”

“Shut up Nari, no one wants to hear about your lame sleeping jutsu. Sensei, my seal was awesome, right? I still have all of Fueno’s shuriken and kunai in my scrolls. We can train with them next time!”

“Both of you, stop that. Sensei, I was the one who found you, not that it was difficult at all since you changed practically nothing. It was harder when you looked exactly like yourself. I won, so teach me a new technique.”

She raised a hand and all three of her children fell silent immediately. Sajou himself had never even _dreamed_ of commanding half of the respect that she did from his genin. “Nari, good job. Sakura will be glad to hear that. Oka, please return Fueno’s weapons. Those are custom-made and I don’t want to start a fifth war over some genin’s expensive shuriken. Kai, following Sasuke is cheating and you know that. But I’ll teach you anyway since you’re the only one who didn’t look directly at the Kage box.”

Kai shrugged. “I’m just making use of all available resources. It just so happened that Sasuke-san didn’t mind leading me straight to you, so why should I expend more effort than I have to?”

She glared at the man behind her, whose missing arm Sajou was only now noticing. “You just defeated the purpose of this exercise, bastard. It was going to be their graduation test.”

“That’s what the Chuunin Exam is for. And it was a ridiculously simple task anyway, idiot,” Uchiha said, and Sajou nearly gasped. The audacity! How could a man say that to such a wonderful woman? “They could’ve done this three years ago.”

“I had a weak genjutsu and compulsion jutsu applied and my chakra signature was scrambled—it wasn’t going to be _that_ simple. You’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”

Uchiha snorted. “You’re just going to join me anyway, so what’s the point.”

“Can you not talk about this here? There are things that we really don’t need to know about,” Oka said. His face was an improbable shade of green that clashed horridly with his red hair and nearly blue skin.

“You’re fifteen and you have a girlfriend. That’s more than I ever had when I was your age.”

Oka grimaced. “That’s because all your life you only ever had eyes for Sasuke-san, but he was too busy getting revenge or whatever to notice you mooning over him. And now that I’ve said that, excuse me while I go to wash my mouth and scrub my mind.”

At some point along this incredibly enlightening conversation, everything had slotted into place with a satisfying finality in Sajou’s brain. This woman was Uchiha’s wife and the jounin-sensei of these completely dissimilar genin. He wasn’t aware that Uchiha was married, but then, unless one was very, very foolish, nobody really lingered on Uchiha’s page in bingo books.

Sajou was deeply regretting telling his team everything about the yellow-haired woman now, because they’d made him swear to ask her out by the end of the Chuunin Exam or they’d bleed his wallet dry. But Sajou really, _really_ didn’t want to get on the wrong side of somebody with a Sharingan, even if his wife was the most compelling woman he had ever crossed paths with.

“Sensei, aren’t you going to drop the henge? You can’t make the closing speech looking like that,” Nari said.

“He has the Hokage’s mandate. He can do anything he wants,” Kai retorted.

“But that doesn’t mean he should—Shikamaru-san will really strangle him this time. As much as I want to see him willingly lift a finger for once, Uzushio won’t be happy if sensei stepped down so soon after he promised to help them rebuild.”

“They’re right, dead last. You look ridiculous anyway,” Uchiha said, plucking at long yellow hair with mild disdain.

She slipped her hand into Uchiha’s and pulled him down by the neck until they were eye-to-eye. “Are you saying that I’m not attractive like this?”

Uchiha snorted. “I’m saying that I don’t want to wake up next to a stranger.”

“That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me this week. Love you too,” she said, grinning. Then she turned to Sajou, face smoothing into a pleasantly neutral expression. “Sorry it’s kind of sudden, but I have to go. I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay here in Konohagakure.”

There wasn’t much Sajou could do but nod dumbly as she bade him goodbye and walked off with Uchiha and her genin.

And a second after _that_ , there wasn’t much he could do but gape when her narrow back widened and a cloak unfurled around it. Uchiha passed a bright red hat over, and in an instant Sajou could finally put a name to the person he’d been thinking of for the last couple of months.

…his genin were going to be so rich.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why are Sajou's genin are going to be rich? The forfeit for not asking the woman out was bleeding his wallet dry, and Sajou sure as hell isn't going to ask Hokage Naruto out, especially if Sasuke has any say in the matter. Also, Sajou will be taking some time to reevaluate his orientation.
> 
> I feel like "In which people snort a lot" would've been a more appropriate summary haha
> 
>  **Next chapter** : last chapter which I don't know how to title


	11. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the worst part of being sealed away in a jinchuuriki isn’t the being sealed part—it’s the jinchuuriki part.
> 
> Or: Kurama wishes he didn’t have to feel and hear everything that happens when his host melts every time a certain someone comes within chakra-sensing range.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who've been following this since the beginning: I'm sorry for the wait. Thank you for reading despite my atrocious update schedule.
> 
> Disclaimer: I haven't engaged with Naruto canon in a really long time. Any inaccuracies regarding Kurama's experience of having Naruto as his jinchuuriki are entirely unintentional (though possibly still unforgivable, but I beg your forgiveness anyway.)
> 
> Also, despite the chapter summary, this has more fluffy dialogue than smut. In fact, there is no smut at all because I can't write smut.

The window was wide open when he arrived, stepping through it on soundless feet as if he’d been blown in by the wind.

Kurama had sensed him coming a long way away, and so had his host. Unfortunately, while Kurama didn’t think of this as anything more than a mundane, once weekly event that had been going on for years, his host had very different ideas.

It wasn’t that Kurama didn’t want to see his host happy—he really did, after all these years. But Naruto’s happiness was far too tied up with the kind of physical intimacy that Kurama wanted no part in. It was bad enough when Naruto had been a boy who didn’t know what it meant that he wanted nothing more than to have Sasuke’s full attention. Now that Naruto both knew it and, more importantly, _had_ said attention (after what was in Kurama’s opinion the stupidest courtship _ever_ ), Kurama wanted the option of temporarily evacuating whenever they started doing…things.

“You should be asleep,” Sasuke said, leaning up against the window, backlit by moonlight. If it weren’t for his pale skin and the silver shine of his sword, he would have been barely discernable against the night, the lines of his silhouette blurred where black hair and charcoal coat melted into darkness.

“Speak for yourself. You don’t even have a sleep schedule,” Naruto replied. He shuffled the papers on his desk, spared them one last glance, and put them aside and turned around to face the window. His eyes briefly met Sasuke’s, then slid off and focussed on the village beyond, with its lanterns and lamplights like tiny, grounded stars.

Sasuke cocked his head, and his lips tilted up just the slightest. “Where’s my ‘Welcome home’?”

Naruto heaved an unnecessarily heavy sigh and looked at Sasuke pointedly. Inside his seal, Kurama groaned, because they did this every single time—banter for a while (a very long while, most times) until the tension became unbearable. “If you wanted to hear that, you shouldn’t have insulted me.”

Sasuke snorted. “You call that an insult?”

“What’s that supposed to be then?”

“Are you stupid? That’s me showing I don’t hate you.”

“Wow. Be still my heart,” Naruto deadpanned, and tossed the Hokage hat at Sasuke for good measure. It soared past Sasuke’s head and out the window, before he flickered away and returned with it caught loosely in one hand (his _only_ hand).

“If you wanted romance you should’ve married someone else.” Sasuke set the hat on Naruto’s head, taking care so that it was on backwards and the cloth covered Naruto’s face. He then swept the cloth aside, murmuring, “This is how they do things further west, by the way,” and pressed his lips to the corner of Naruto’s mouth. “How are the children?”

“Already preparing for their jounin exam, if you can believe that.” Despite himself, Naruto smiled.  
“Look at us, not even married and already discussing my genin-turned-chuunin like we raised them from birth.” Kurama silently wept for joy as, not five years ago, Naruto would’ve demanded a proper kiss and things would’ve rapidly devolved from there. In a few years, perhaps Naruto and Sasuke would completely forgo the need for physical gratification at all and leave Kurama alone. It was unlikely, but Kurama was old and patient and he could out-wait any human.

“Not for lack of trying on _my_ part.” Sasuke dipped a hand into the collar of Naruto’s jacket and pulled out a slim chain, slipping a finger partway through the ring threaded on it. He raised a pointed eyebrow at Naruto.

“Hey, don’t look at me. I gave you _your_ ring first.”

“Third thing you’ve done right in this life,” Sasuke whispered.

“What are the first two?” Naruto asked, equally softly, leaning in.

Sasuke let the cloth fall across their faces. “Befriending me,” he said, lips dragging across Naruto’s cheek.

Naruto turned his face towards Sasuke, chasing his mouth. “And?”

“Befriending everybody so hard that Konoha made you Hokage,” Sasuke all but mouthed the words soundlessly against Naruto’s lips.

Naruto stilled and stared. “…I was expecting something more romantic.”

Kurama laughed. It happened almost every time and Naruto, ever the optimist, never learned.

Sasuke backed away and sat back against the window, a ghost of a smile on his face. “As I said, don’t look to me for romance.”

“But I know you’re capable of it. You share your beloved tomatoes with me even when I’d really rather you didn’t, and you practically just married us western style.”

Sasuke shrugged. “Not really. Usually there’s someone presiding over the ceremony.” He plucked the hat off Naruto’s head and flipped it around so that he could put it on Naruto again properly. “And the veil is traditionally for women only.”

“Oh. Okay, no veil then.”

“You can still wear it if you really want. I think you’d look good. I think I’d look good too. There’s very little that’ll make us look bad.”

Naruto patted Sasuke’s cheek, grinning despite the stress of the day that made even Kurama feel lethargic. Thankfully, Kurama could feel the exhaustion sloughing off with every passing moment spent in Sasuke’s company, which was perhaps the only tolerable thing about their relationship. “Humility clearly isn’t one of your virtues.”

“You knew that before you let me put my ring on you.”

“Now you’re just putting all the blame on me.”

“I’m not blaming you,” Sasuke said. “I’m thanking you.” He reached for Naruto’s prosthetic, pressing a kiss to the bandages on the palm and holding his eye. It didn’t feel much like skin, and Kurama understood from Naruto and Sasuke’s history that this was an apology, a ‘Sorry for destroying your arm’ that was echoed so deeply in everything Sasuke did.

“You need to take back what you said. That was romantic. I knew I liked you for a reason.”

“Like me? You _love_ me.”

Naruto laughed, eyes smiling, and Kurama agreed with the sentiment because the Uchiha said the most outrageously vainglorious things sometimes (although, granted, he was right about this one). “Yeah, you’re really not winning any prizes for humility.”

“I’m secure. Which, you know, is the kind of thing that’s ideal for people in committed relationships.”

Naruto’s smile softened. “Is that what we are? In a committed relationship?”

“Are you seriously asking me this now? After ten years, a pair of rings, and three children?” Sasuke sounded almost insulted, but the hand gently squeezing Naruto’s said otherwise. Kurama would hurl if he could.

“Well I can never be sure with you. It feels like I’ve barely seen you at all these fifteen years.”

“First of all, I’ve already apologised for those first five years I spent trying to avenge my clan and kill you and everybody else. Second of all, we mutually agreed that Konoha’s needs were best met with me outside and you inside.”

“Yeah, and third of all you’re even stupider than I thought you were if you think any of these makes me miss you less.”

“Mm. Ignoring the absolutely ludicrous notion of me being _stupid_ when that’s clearly your role in this relationship, I think you’ll be pleased to know that I’m officially resigning.”

That startled Naruto’s hand out of Sasuke’s. “What?”

“Don’t look so pleased; I’m not going to be your house-husband. I’m just saying, I’m not going to keep leaving every week on the off chance that some evil is lurking just outside Konoha.” Sasuke walked past Naruto to take a seat on his desk, gazing out over the village. He gestured expansively at the buildings spreading below them, then at the forest beyond. “We have informants in every corner of the elemental countries, and the Kage are more than generous with their intelligence. You’ve read my reports—you know all these.”

Naruto took his hat off and rested his head against Sasuke’s side, following Sasuke’s fingers to where they spread out in the vague direction of the rest of the village. There was an unusually warm breeze coming through the window, and Naruto raised his hand as well to feel it on his skin. His other hand curled loosely around Sasuke’s waist. “But if you’re not going to be my house-husband—which by the way I’ll have you know is a highly coveted position—what are you going to do instead?”

“I think it’s high time we had a proper police force again. Not Uchiha-run, of course. I think we’ve learned that lesson, and there’s just me anyway. I want there to be separation of military and civil forces. Maybe they can hold combined drills or train together, but the police has no business using military grade weaponry.”

“Seems like you’ve given it a lot of thought.”

“There’s nothing much to do when you’re travelling alone.” Sasuke pulled Naruto in closer to his side and wrapped his cloak around them as if that would stop anything from ever separating them again. Naruto went willingly, relaxing and catching Sasuke’s hand in his once the cloak had settled over his shoulders. Sasuke’s hand felt a little chilly against Naruto’s skin, like he had been too focussed on coming back to pay much attention to how uncomfortably cold his fingers had become. It lit a pleasant warmth in Naruto’s chest that bled into Kurama’s as well.

“Some of the other countries have incredible civil service infrastructure dedicated to specific tasks like putting out fires,” Sasuke continued, oblivious to how oddly endearing his cold hands were. “I want to implement these here. I’ve seen enough to know what the basics are, and I’ve kept in touch with officials from other countries. They’ll be falling over each other to offer advice to the hero of the Fourth Shinobi War. We’ll be fine.”

“We’ll be more than fine.”

“Now look who’s not being humble,” Sasuke teased.

“I’m the Hokage—I’m allowed to be proud of what my people have done and can do with this village. We’re prospering.” Naruto nodded at the village outside his window, large and sprawling and gently glowing with life. “Look at how far we’ve come.”

“Yes, in spite of my best attempts to destroy it,” Sasuke said wryly.

“Hey, no more of that. That was ten years ago, and I would’ve thought that I’d done a pretty good job domesticating these thoughts out of you.”

Sasuke’s eyes cut to Naruto, who glanced up questioningly when Sasuke remained silent for much longer than was normal. Finally, Sasuke said, almost horrified, “I really _am_ a kept man.”

Naruto chuckled, threading his fingers through Sasuke’s. “As long as you’re _my_ kept man, I don’t care.”

“Does this mean that I’m state property, _Hokage-sama_? Because I’d rather only belong to you, if I have to belong to anyone at all.”

“Don’t pull that on me. You know very well that I don’t share when it comes to you.”

“When you put it like that, I’m surprised Orochimaru is still alive.”

“He has his uses. Now, what was that about only belonging to me?”

“Would you like a demonstration?”

“Are you up for it?”

“Is Kurama going to kill me if I am?” Kurama wasn’t planning on it because then Naruto would be devastated and Kurama would have to live with that for the rest of Naruto’s Uzumaki-enhanced long life, but he would if Sasuke didn’t stop asking questions that he already knew the answers to.

“He can deal with it.”

“That’s not reassuring at all. The last time you said that I woke up thinking that we lost the war and that I’d lost you.”

“He knows not to do that again. I was very strict with him about his use of genjutsu,” Naruto said, pressing a reassuring kiss to Sasuke’s shoulder. He also pointedly nudged Kurama, who grumbled and sent back a petulant, ‘It wasn’t even a good illusion; he broke it almost immediately,’ to which Naruto responded with, ‘That doesn’t make it any better.’

“He doesn’t even listen to you half the time.”

Standing up from his chair, Naruto pulled Sasuke up as well and drew him in with a hand curled around his neck. “Are we going to spend the night talking about Kurama or are you coming home with me, bastard?”

“Actually, I’m already home.”

Naruto stared at Sasuke. “When did you move into my office?”

“I’m talking about you, you idiot.”

Naruto stared at Sasuke some more, then burst out laughing and buried his face in Sasuke’s neck. “That was so romantic it deserves a reward.”

Kurama had been with Naruto long enough to know what was coming next. For once, he was in complete agreement with the both of them, because, once Kurama stopped thinking of Naruto as his jailor, he’d started thinking of him as family.

Lifting his head, Naruto smiled and met Sasuke’s lips. “Welcome home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this last chapter was a good wrap up for the fic after 10 other different short stories. Tbh, I think Naruto is home to a lot of people--I mean, he collects friends like they're going out of style, his family of choice probably spans all elemental nations. (But some people are more special than others, of course.)


End file.
